I try to keep my fridge stocked with the basics – eggs, milk, and butter. The jar of white flour should be full, and there should be extra whole wheat flour stashed away somewhere. I keep sour cream or yogurt around because I tend to cook with it, but I try not to keep multiple packages of cream cheese around. Its dangerous!

So what to do when I just have to have cheesecake? (these are the important questions)

Yes, cheesecake. Very dangerous. Very rich.

It turns out, you don’t need to use cream cheese. There are recipes for cheesecake which use a variety of other cheeses – like ricotta, or farmer’s cheese. The beauty of using Farmer’s Cheese, of course, is that you can make it yourself, and flavor it however you like while making it.

I tried this recipe using cheese made from apple cider vinegar and sprinkled with cinnamon and topped with applesauce. Awesome.

Farmer's Cheesecake

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Cheesecake made from Farmer's Cheese - delicious, rich, and made from ingredients already in your fridge!

Pour your milk into a large pot, and gently warm until it is frothy. Use the apple cider vinegar to separate the curds from the whey and drain. Add cinnamon if desired.
(this is just the standard Farmer's Cheese recipe adapted; you can find more details here.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Cut in butter, as if you were making pie crust dough.

Beat 3 egg yolks and 3 tablespoons of sour cream together, and then add to the flour mixture. Mix until it forms dough (again, resembling pie crust dough). Roll out and place in pie plate.

Beat the 4 eggs and one egg white at high speed until frothy. You will probably want to use an electric beater!

Put farmer's cheese, granulated sugar, 1/2 cup sour cream, and vanilla extract in a blender. Blend well. The Farmer's Cheese will be naturally rather granular when first made; it should be chopped up until very fine and liquid. Add some of the egg mixture if necessary.

Fold together the farmer's cheese mixture and egg mixtures. Pour into the pie plate.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 40 minutes. The cake will rise in the oven, turn golden, and set.

Cool for a few hours in the refrigerator before serving. Enjoy!

Recipe Notes

One thing I like about this recipe is that it does have instructions on making its own crust. You could definitely still do a typical graham cracker crust with this, but if you don't keep graham crackers around either, this makes it simpler.

Cream pies are amazing creamy goodness. There is, granted, probably not much redeeming benefit health-wise (unlike fruit pies – those are totally healthy, right?), but they are delicious.

You can add as much or as little cinnamon to this recipe as you like to give it some flavor. Otherwise, its all cream – and its very very important that you make it with cream! I’ve tried a lot of variations with less cream, more milk, or buttermilk, and its just not worth it. If you are horrified at the thought of a pie with cups and cups of cream and then some butter added for good measure, this pie is not for you. Just. . . don’t make a cream pie. Make some other kind of pie.

In other news, I realize that I’ve missed a few weeks here. Christmas bustle got to me. I will be resuming regular scheduling as of. . .now!

Bake for about 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll know the pie is done when its bubbling ALL the way across the top. Let it do this for about 10 minutes before taking it out of the oven.

Let the pie cool completely in the fridge for optimal creaminess.

Recipe Notes

You can also use half and half instead of 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup milk, but then you will be buying 3 dairy products instead of 2. This seems silly to me, unless you already buy half and half.

If you really can't get enough cinnamon, you can add cinnamon to the cream mixture as well as sprinkling it across the top. Nutmeg and Ginger also taste good. Add as much or as little spice as you like.

Quite a mouthful, right? I found this pie recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine a few years ago, selling itself short as caramel apple and cherry pie. But there’s serious cranberry and orange going on here too!

I’ve made this pie two Thanksgivings in a row now. Its perfect for the holidays!

Caramel-Apple Cranberry-Cherry Pie

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This pie combines two completely different fillings together for a delicious festive dessert!

Servings

Prep Time

8people

45minutes

Cook Time

45minutes

Servings

Prep Time

8people

45minutes

Cook Time

45minutes

Caramel-Apple Cranberry-Cherry Pie

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This pie combines two completely different fillings together for a delicious festive dessert!

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. You are going to want to cook your piecrust a bit before adding the filling, so go ahead and put it in your pie plate and poke the bottom and sides with a fork.
You will want to leave some dough for the top crust.
Cook the crust for a maximum of 20 minutes while you work on the filling.

For the cranberry cherry mixture, combine your cranberries, white sugar, orange juice (and some orange zest if you want extra oranginess). Cook until the cranberries burst.
Add your cherries to the cranberry mixture. If your cherries were frozen (its not like they're in season in November. . .), you might want to cook them for a bit all together. If not, you're done! Set the mixture aside.

For your caramel apple filling, peel and chop your apples, adding your lemon juice and zest to keep them from browning too soon. Mix together your flour, sugar, and cinnamon, and then add your dry mix to the apples. Mix until well coated.
Melt your butter in a saucepan on the stove, then add your apple mixture (the pan should be large enough for all the apples with some room to spare!). Cook for 5 minutes, or until the apples are tender. Add your whipping cream and vanilla, and continue cooking, stirring frequently. In about five more minutes, the mixture should thicken. Take it off the heat.

Alternately layer your apple and cran-cherry fillings in your (partially cooked) pie crust. You should start with a layer of caramelized apples, and end with the cranberry cherry mixture.

Cover with your top crust. You can do cute shapes made of pie dough, or a lattice top. You may want to brush some egg white on your top crust to make it pretty. Feel free to also sprinkle it with sugar.

Bake your pie another 40 or so minutes. Its done when the filling is bubbling and the top is golden brown!

Recipe Notes

Please note, the cute leaf shapes for a top crust sounds great, but they never come out as pretty as a magazine pictures. I will definitely be doing a lattice top next time around.

These sweet biscuity-cakes are a traditional food for Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day; the cakes were given out to beggars and children who went door to door on All Hallow’s Eve. There’s not really one “official recipe” for soul cakes; I imagine that people used different combinations of sweet spices and dried fruit over the years. But this recipe is nice!

Soul Cakes

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A slightly sweet and spicey biscuit, traditionally given out on Halloween.

These scones are the result of several failed attempts at pumpkin bready things – including pancakes (they didn’t cook properly), and an overly hard set of biscuits. At last, I think I have found the correct ratio of pumpkin to scone ingredients!

Please note – I always think of scones as sweet due to the “scones” for sale at grocery stores, and some bakeries. These are not particularly sweet.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about one hour. Make sure the cake is done by inserting a knife into the center; it should come out clean.

Recipe Notes

Its fairly common to cut the oil required in a carrot cake recipe with applesauce, but pumpkin puree works well too! Its especially practical if you've been cooking down a lot of pumpkin recently.

Blackstrap molasses actually tastes acceptable in this cake - possibly because it is not the main sweetener, it just gives the cake a nice brown color. You could probably also use brown sugar and no molasses.

This cake is good enough to be dessert for sure, especially if you ice it with cream cheese frosting. But I like to leave it plain and have it for breakfast with my morning coffee. Yum!

Rhubarb was not quite as expensive as usual at the grocery store this week, so I couldn’t resist buying a few stalks and making something rhubarb-y.

Now everyone knows that rhubarb and strawberries go great together. But rhubarb is equally good with apples! Granted, it won’t have that pretty red tint, but the apples nicely balance out the tartness of the rhubarb. And anyway, strawberries aren’t in season . . .

Peel and chop up your sweet potato. Put it in a saucepan with a bit of water and cook until tender.
If you processed your own pumpkin and were keeping it frozen like I do, you probably want to defrost it now. Better yet, throw the frozen chunks in with the sweet potatos and kill two birds with one stone.

Once your sweet potato is soft, mash it up and combine it with the pumpkin puree.

Add sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Stir well.

Beat your egg(s) and add to the mixture, along with your milk. If your sweet potato / pumpkin mix is still warm enough, you can chop up the 1/4 cup of butter and melt it in with everything. If not, then melt the butter in the microwave, then add it to the mixture.

Add the rum! Mix everything together well.

Pour your mixture into 1-2 casserole dishes. I use varying amounts of sweet potato and pumpkin, so it often exceeds one 8x8 dish.